No Man’s Sky Synthesis Update Adds Ship Salvaging, Terrain Editing, VR Fixes, & More

The next chapter of No Man’s Sky has arrived with the Synthesis Update, which adds a substantial number of “frequently requested” features, in addition to bug fixes and improvements to VR functionality.

Here are the major new additions:

Ship Salvage

• Introduced a new ship salvaging mechanic. Visit the ship salvage module at a space station to perform a number of ship operations, including salvaging a ship for scrap.
• Scrap includes valuable products, new technologies and an inventory augmentation, allowing the expansion of another starship’s inventory.
• Starship inventories can also be upgraded for a significant amount of units.
• The starship outfitting station also has the ability to upgrade the class of starships that are not yet S-Class. This upgrade requires a significant amount of nanites.

Terrain Editing

• Significantly optimized the Terrain Manipulator for smoother planetary editing.
• Improved the visual effects when editing terrain with the Terrain Manipulator.
• Added a flattening mode to the Terrain Manipulator to allow quick and easy flattening of a large area.
• Added a ‘Restore’ mode to the Terrain Manipulator, allowing edits to be undone and the terrain restored to its previous state.
• Edits made using the Terrain Manipulator within the bounds of a base are now protected in the same way as edits made by base parts, preventing them from being removed by further editing outside the base.
• Fixed a number of issues where protected base part edits were being used up by things that did not need protection, causing bases to run out of available terrain edits too early.
• Fixed a range of issues that made using the Terrain Manipulator difficult in VR.

Multi-Tools

• Added the ability for players to own more than one Multi-Tool. When purchasing a new Multi-Tool, there are now options to trade in or to outright purchase the tool.
• Purchased Multi-Tools will be added to the Quick Menu for easy swapping.

VR/ Non-VR Parity

• Photo Mode is now available in VR.
• Creatures may now be ridden in VR.
• First-person cameras for the Exocraft are now available in non-VR.

Personal Refiner

• Added a new technology, the Personal Refiner. This technology allows for elements to be refined directly within the Exosuit, without having to place a portable refiner on a planetary surface.

Customizer

• Added the ability to save a range of custom outfits in the Customiser, allowing for quick changes between a range of appearances.

Space Map

• Improved the Space Map to bring greater clarity as to the position of other ships and planets.
• Improved the compass while piloting in space, so it no longer displays objects in the center of the compass if they are behind the starship.

You can head over to Hello Games’ blog post to read the full patch notes, which provide an extensive list of bug fixes and improvements.

Today’s update follows on from patch 2.09, which was designed to improve PC and VR optimization.